Let's say you own a climbing store and decide to sell gear online. You try
make the site look good by linking to photos of famous mountains you found
elsewhere on the Web. Have you broken the law?

Before you answer that, try another question. To further interest the Web
surfers who visit your site, you provide links to articles about mountaineering from other sites around the Internet. Is that illegal?

To the consternation of some observers, a recent federal court ruling in San Francisco has called into question some basic linking practices  and demonstrated the extent to which the legal status of links remains undefined, even though they have been the essence of the World-Wide Web since Tim Berners-Lee developed it in 1989.

"There's never been a definitive legal ruling" about linking, says Fred Von
Lohmann, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in San Francisco, who favors unrestrained linking. "There's still a lack of clarity."